1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to route mapping devices and, more particularly, to a device for determining the optimum route for a delivery truck with many intermediate stops.
2. Prior Art
There are many businesses today which must make numerous deliveries each day to various customers throughout a large area. The customers to whom goods are being delivered may change every day, requiring the delivery route to be changed each day, too. Of course, with high fuel prices and other costs involved with making deliveries, there are substantial savings to be made in using the shortest and/or fastest route for servicing all of these customers.
A system currently in use for mapping such a delivery route involves a computerized print-out, known as a "truck and stop" list, containing the names and addresses of all customers of the company. This list, published periodically, divides large areas into smaller areas corresponding to deliveries made by each truck. Within each truck area, stop numbers are assigned, in numerical order, to customers that are within a particular delivery area. Thus, a list of customers to whom deliveries are to be made on a particular day in order of their delivery may be prepared by referring to the priority of the stop number of each customer.
If the list is arranged in the manner that represents an efficient delivery route, and if a representative sample of this list has an order going out on the truck, the driver should have a rough approximation of an efficient route to follow for his delivery. In practice, this system has several deficiencies though.
If an order comes in for a particular region that is not on the truck and stop list, it must be routed by hand. This kind of insertion into the list requires a thorough knowledge of the ara by the person doing the routing and is time consuming and inefficient. This is especially true during holidays or 4-day work weeks.
ALso, the present system has the potential for wasting considerable time and fuel. If there are large gaps in the deliveries for a particular day, the ordering of the route could well be less efficient than could be otherwise obtained.
Another deficiency is that, practically speaking, the computer list is only updated periodically. It frequently takes several weeks to get such an updated list. Thus, during most of the time each list is in use, all new customers must be routed by hand, a very slow and inefficient process.
Another system currently in use is for a truck and stop list to be prepared for each truck which includes a list of all customers who are expected to call in for deliveries the next day, plus all stops which salesmen are expected to make for their customers expecting delivery the next day. The potential stops are divided among the trucks and logical routes are prepared.
If customers other than those on the list call in, or if one of the salesman calls on a customer on a day other then his normal day, this new customer must be "feathered in" at the appropriate spot for the correct truck. It is the router's job to put these new customers on the right truck in the most efficient spot possible. If the computerized list was arranged correctly to begin with and if the feathering in is done correctly, the driver will have a logical route to follow for his deliveries.
Specifically, what is wrong with this system is that it tries to foretell the future. That is, it tries to predict which customers will call in for a delivery the next day and tries to preprepare an efficient route based on this divination. Not only is this impossible, it's even impossible to predict where the salesmen will go in that day.
If one salesman changes his day of call for a customer, he is automatically changing the prepared route list to an inefficient one. (Assuming it was correctly arranged to begin with). Salesmen make "wrong day" calls every day. Often customers call in for a second or third delivery for the week. There are shortages and reroutes every day. Nevertheless, the routes must be produced quickly so the orders can be sent to the warehouse to be filled with as little delay as possible. The result is that twenty or more miles are wasted out of every one hundred driven as well as resulting in much wasted driver overtime.
Yet another problem with the prior art methods is that the person preparing the route must have a high degree of skill and knowledge of the area. There is frequently no one to back up the regular router with the necessary skill. Thus, if the regular router quits or is sick, the company would have serious difficulties.
The ultimate reason for truck and stop numbers is speed. For example, a large distributor may serve literally thousands of customers. Some distributors serve their customers on a 24 hour basis and some on a 48 hour basis. Some distributors must route, process and fill hundreds of orders and get them delivered all on a 24 hour basis. Desiring speed the company tries to pre-assign days of delivery to each customer and assign to that customer a specific stop number on a specific truck. If the truck and stop number is pre-assigned the order can be "automatically" routed. Every time a given order comes in on a certain day it is assigned a certain truck and stop number. In the interest of speed the company is trying to do as much of the work of routing in advance as possible. Due to the limitations inherent in the truck and stop system indicated above, the company is forced to sacrifice accuracy in routing for speed in the processing of orders. Due to the limitations of the whole "truck and stop" system routes are produced that involve a great deal of "going out of the way" and "doubling back" costing the distributor a great deal in the way of wasted gas, driver overtime, unnecessary wear and tear on equipment, etc.
There are no device currently available which remedy these problems. There have been devices which have used fiber optics to a limited extent to determine routes by lighting up points on maps corresponding to various sites, for example, points of interest on a map of the city for the use of a visitor. However, such devices are not well suited to the task of preparing a route for a large number of individually selected customers. Devices of this sort do not permit a number of individually selected points to be lit simultaneously, nor are they useful where there is a large concentration of points on a map as each point could not be individually labelled with the necessary customer information. They would be very time consuming in actual use. They are also very difficult to update with new customer information and relatively expensive.
Another device which uses fiber optics to light up points on a map employs light conducting fibers to illuminate individual constellations on a star map. This device is not designed for mapping routes and would not be easily adaptable to such purpose since there is no means for keeping one set of lights lit while mapping a route. Further, it is not used as a route mapping device.